Ok fic idea. Hear me out.
So we know James Japp has a relationship with the London queers. “i thought he was one of your unnaturals” etc. and we know that even though he thought Poirot, Hastings, and Miss Lemon were probably all doing it, he still kept coming over and was friends with them.
This man is a friend to the gays, is what I’m saying.
Anyway imagine a fic where, some week where they happen to know Mrs Japp is out of town visiting family in Wales, Hastings and Poirot spot her somewhere where she really shouldn’t be, perhaps on the beach suntanning with someone else who’s under a towel.
Well, they conclude she might be cheating and they decide to follow her to make sure but they lose her somewhere along the way and they have to go home to tell Japp that his wife was lying to him and he assures them that it’s ok and that he knew, she just had a change of plans, is all.
But he’s being a bit squirrelly and Hastings suggests he lying and that he didn’t know, but why? And Poirot concludes that of course, he’s embarrassed, and how sad is it that he feels he cannot even be open with his friends. These Englishmen always play these things very close to the breasts, you know.
Anyway, they decide they simply must get to the bottom of it all for their old friend Japp, and so they set out once more in search of Emily, and when they find her, they find she, Japp, and sporty sort of lady all having tea together.
Japp claims that their description of how much fun his wife was having with her cousin was so moving that he hopped on the train and came down to join them for a bit of sea air and an iced lolly.
And so, they are forced to be satisfied with this, and content themselves with enjoying the sights.
But the next morning, Japp is in their hotel room, completely distraught. He says he lied. He lied about all of it, they both did, and she’s missing.
Who? They ask. And he swears them to secrecy and then he makes them pinky promise for good measure.
That lady wasn’t his cousin, he says, and Mrs Japp is his wife in name only.
They met at school and became friends, of a sort, and then he caught her with another girl behind the loos and she swore him to secrecy and they became closer because of it. And then at some point, she asked him to go out with her for the look of the thing, and he, deciding he’s not very interested in that sort of thing anyway, agrees. And they wind up getting married.
At that lady was his wife’s paramour, who she was visiting.
And who disappeared from her hotel room some time during the night.
And then you know, casefic etc and Poirot and Hastings going through their usual shenanigans saying something mildly offensive about the depravity of it, deciding to help their friend, and then ultimately concluding that the two women are very much in love and very sweet together. And Hastings is substantially more ok with it than Poirot, because of course he is.
